Let the travels begin: the first flight with a baby

As my first overseas trip with a baby comes to a close, I’ve got enough material for about half a dozen posts, from our experience in the airport to the flight itself and my first family travel lessons learned. So, here are a few edited highlights…

Getting back on a plane for the first time in slightly over six months has been one of the longest gaps for years. And God, I’ve missed it. That bubble of excitement as the plane takes off, the start of a new adventure, the being crammed into a confined space for hours. OK so I didn’t miss that last bit – but all in all a great flight.

Not least because Minnie also had a great first flight. Packing in a nap, a book (That’s Not My Monster) and a drink – my standard flight trio – she seemed to take any take-off and landing ear-popping in her stride, got an intrigued look at the clouds (I wish I knew what was going on in her head) and moaned less than the annoying man in the seat behind.

I’ve also negotiated airport security with a buggy and wide-eyed nearly four-month-old, discovered what happens when you seriously mess with routine, broken out the factor 50 and fretted about sneaky rays of sun getting past the baby shade, pondered desalinated water, been smug and then dealt with post-travel meltdown.

At least Lanzarote produces its own rather yummy wine, I brought helpful grandparents, and had 10 days to explore in the sun!

Step 1: navigating the airport

Step one – negotiating the airport with a baby. We were flying out of Birmingham, one of the closest airports to my parents’ house but not one I know well, so it seemed a doubly new experience.

With our essentials squished into the maximum hand luggage allowance (just – and my dad still had to carry my camera in his bag) two suitcases, one car seat in a bag and Minnie in her buggy, we were fairly well laden.

At one point during packing, I had pondered taking half as many clothes and twice as much washing liquid as our villa has a machine, though only time will tell if that would have been the best idea.

Here’s my lessons learned about what to pack for a first overseas trip with a baby…

In the end, everything checked in fine, even if I discovered that the buggy carrier (£14.99 from Kiddicare) already had a hole in. Although all the reviews of the different makes seems to suggest none of them survive well, and better the bag gets shredded than the buggy itself.

Even security was fine. Having got my own unpacking down to a fine art – netbook and bag of liquids out, watch and belt off, check the shoes, saunter through, repeat in reverse, I had to admit I had no idea what to do with the buggy, baby and bottles.

Fortunately security were helpful and professionally friendly – all the crap out of the bottom of the buggy (including the rain cover and shopping bags that lurk there on a day-to-day basis and hadn’t been removed) and push it to a spot between the metal detectors. Saunter through with baby, collect bags and buggy, then head round to taste 50% of the bottles of water.

After a brief query of one other unspecified item which had shown up on X-ray (squeaky banana? formula pot?), we were cleared as no threat to national security and through.

From then, we got to discover the airport’s baby changing (fine, although it would have been useful to have a toilet with a changing table in as well), picked up the essentials at Boots (pre-order ready and waiting) and after a brief fret at a 20 minute delay, we were on the plane…

And happily the departure board looked nothing like this!

Step 2: taking flight – baby on board

I love flying, I always have. That moment where the plane lifts off from the ground in faintly magical fashion (er and thrust and aerodynamics and stuff), getting to stare out across a blue sky above the clouds, watching the sun set on the horizon, and that bubble of excitement as you touch down again. Free mini bottles of wine are obviously a bonus.

I’m sure I remember my parents instilling this love of flying, from my first trips abroad aged about five (even if they don’t). It was a huge adventure, something to be excited about, right down to the special boiled sweets to suck. I’m hoping to pass this on to Minnie, although I’m not sure how much will register just yet.

But she picked a good flight to start with. After our 20 minute delay, we were one of the first to board (the joys of travelling with a baby) and discovered that taking the buggy to the plane means exactly that, leaving it practically by the cockpit – and therefore having to lug it down the stairs (thankfully I had my parents to help) while Minnie promptly fell asleep in the baby carrier, only to be crossly awoken when we settled into our seat.

We’d been issued with the extra belt by cabin crew – sadly no actual instructions about what to do, although peering across at the mum of a toddler opposite revealed the small loop went through my belt and the rest clipped round her waist.

Then, we discovered that the 20 minute delay was down to a strong headwind delaying the plane from arriving – but which was now a strong tailwind speeding us on our way to Lanzarote in just over three hours, chopping an hour or so off the journey.

And Minnie took it all in her stride – I fed her on take-off, and apart from some mild surprise that she was getting another bottle so soon, the change in pressure didn’t seem to bother her, so much so that I didn’t bother with the extra feed on landing.

My ears seem to equalise themselves, so I rarely have to pop them – I can only hope I’ve passed that rather useful genetic trait on to her.

Otherwise, she slept, had her feed, ‘read’ a book, stared out of the window at the fluffy clouds (my standard plane activities) and behaved as well as I might have hoped.

And apart from forgetting to take her change mat to the toilet and looking wildly around for where to change her until I finally spotted the fold-down table above the loo (sleep deprivation is a terrible thing), we managed that with aplomb too.

Then after tracking down the buggy and car seat on the farflung outsize luggage carousel, we were on the way to our villa and home for the next 10 days…

Travel lesson learned: There’s no point packing for practically every eventuality if you then put your hand luggage in the overhead lockers. I had taken out most of what I thought I might need, but inevitably needed to keep getting up for extras. Next time it stays by my feet.

Step 3: Don’t mess with my routine

What to do on the first day of your holiday? Get your bearings? Lounge in the sun? Plan all the exciting things you’ll be doing? Or you could spend most of it trying to soothe a fractious baby and worrying that the whole trip is going to be a disaster.

I’d had a taste of what happens when you mess with a perfectly good routine on the first night – Minnie’s isn’t set in stone, although we try to keep bath and night time regular, and she tends to stick to a feeding pattern during the day.

Her daytime naps are snatched and grudging at the best of times as she seems to feel she’s missing out if she closes her eyes.

So although it’s useful to have a structure, I’m happy to be flexible if it suits everyone. But putting her to bed on the first night was a mission.

We’d arrived too late for her to have her 7pm bath so I’d planned her usual feed and straight to sleep when we arrived. Except it was all new! And exciting! And different! And our villa had a larger cot!

Minnie may have been overtired but she was also over-excited and very reluctant to calm down and drop off – eventually after an hour of rocking, shushing, soothing and roughly 9,402,365 lullabies, she finally fell asleep.

But after a reasonably normal night (that’s to say broken but not horrific) and her usual feeds, I was optimistic we’d sail through.

We had a leisurely start and then a walk along the seafront at Playa Blanca in Lanzarote’s south, where after fiddling with her outfit, shady muslin and cover (Too hot! Too cold! Too windy! Too bright!), she even obligingly dropped off for a nap as we wandered back.

Then the smug was well and truly wiped off my face as she spent the afternoon crying – not usual for her at all. She’s a baby so of course she whinges from time to time but this was nothing like her normal sunny self.

By the end, and some faintly desperate Calpol later, it seemed to be a mini bout of colic or painful wind. I felt wrung out, she was hot, cross and fed up and I’d begun to wonder if coming on holiday was a huge mistake.

Luckily by the following morning, Minnie was restored to cheerfulness and we set about exploring the island.

Travel lesson learned: If you can’t stick to the normal routine (and don’t assume you’ll be able to), be prepared to write off day 1. In fact, it might be safest to allow a day of low-level settling in at the beginning.

Step four: Home sweet home – the flight back with a baby

The flight out to Lanzarote had gone so smoothly. So I suppose this was the universe’s attempt at payback. The day had been going pretty well – blue skies, sunshine, Minnie napping all the way to the airport, no traffic on the roads.

Then we arrived. To discover the check-in desks weren’t open (we’d arrived just over two and a half hours before to avoid rushing and letting us get through security before she needed feeding).

Not the end of the world as at least the queue was short. So we waited. And waited. Nearly an hour after arriving and almost exactly two hours before take-off, they opened.

Once checked in, we joined the gigantic queue for security, where inevitably they had completely different requirements from Birmingham – this time, the buggy had to be folded and hefted onto the belt, while they couldn’t have cared less about me tasting the bottles.

The icing on the cake was discovering Minnie needed an urgent change as I wrestled the buggy back open.

At least the airport had baby change facilities. Judging by the heat, they’d decided to combine them with a sauna though. And if I was sweaty, cross and stressed, it was nothing compared to Minnie who was now well overdue a nap, massively hot and approaching meltdown by testing her lungs to capacity.

Finally, having rocked her to sleep, and feeling my blood pressure starting to drop, we sat and waited for the gate number to appear (while I fantasized about a long cold shower).

On board, I asked for a belt extension. No problem, they’d get one. I waited. Then I asked again. No problem, they’d get one. I waited. By now Minnie (who hadn’t napped long enough thanks to the airport noise) was fed up again… except belting her in would wake her so her sleep had to wait.

The loop finally arrived just as the plane started taxiing to the runway, so I speedily fumbled us both into the belt – and listened to the captain’s announcement… that the strong winds meant we hadn’t enough fuel to get us back to Birmingham.

I did briefly have a wild flare of hope that we’d touch down at Heathrow and I could just go home (because obviously it’s such a quiet airport, they could squeeze another plane in) but instead we would be touching down in Faro to refuel, with around 30 minutes (hopefully) on the ground.

An extra take-off and landing is, of course, just what you want with a baby’s sensitive ears. But after the unpromising start (or perhaps because I calmed down and stopped finding fault with everything), it was fine. The cabin crew were lovely, cooed over Minnie and checked if we had everything we needed.

The refuelling was as smooth as I could have hoped, a worn out Minnie slept and slept and slept and didn’t seem remotely bothered by changes in pressure. In fact, she didn’t even wake at our bumpy touch-down into high winds and torrential rain at Birmingham.

Ah yes, home sweet home (and the tail end of Hurricane Sandy passing over the UK). Forget airport stress, how soon can I fly off to the sun again?

Travel lesson learned: Plan for delays. And find the airport bar…

 

Images courtesy of Depositphotos

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